Any plans for going 64-bit ?

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Glyphman
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Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by Glyphman »

Quite new to using "MainType" and very happy that I changed from another fonthandling software. Was struggeling with the developer for almost 2 month for fix some elementary bugs that showed up after Windows update Aniversary and Creators... All problems solved just using "MainType" :D

The only thing the other software was better in was - after upgrading to 64-bit it went rapidly Fast. Especially when changing between the main folders/librarys that contains a lot of fonts. I can give an example... Having a library with OTF fonts containing apr 8.000 fonts it took about 2 seconds to load in the other 64-bit software, in "FE" it takes minimum 20 seconds. It's a very big difference in speed.
Though this is just a big issue now when organizing all the fonts, making tags etc. When the structure is ready the problem will be less, but always when needing font from the main library this will be a little irritating :roll: You can also say that the functions and handling overall get much much faster, but not a big issue, I'm still slower than the pc...

So... is there any plans going 64-bit?
Erwin Denissen
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Yes, we have such plans, but we don't know when it will actually happen.

Don't expect a lot of speed gain from this.
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Glyphman
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by Glyphman »

Thanx for answer Erwin. I think it will do a lot for the speed when reading databases, but of cause it's a difference between softwares. :D

Good luck and hope it's not too much work to make it 64-bit
MikeW
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by MikeW »

64-bit can access more memory than 32-bit, but being 64-bit doesn't necessarily equate to operational speed increases for many/most applications given the same files (in fact, some 64-bit applications benchmark slower than their 32-bit counterparts). "Speed" differences can become apparent when one is bumping up against the addressable memory limit in a 32-bit version compared to a 64-bit counterpart, but it isn't really greater speed per se. It's just not running into the same resource issues all other things being equal.

Want more speed? Toss money into faster CPUs and drives (and newer technology for those components), and also add more memory along with 64-bit versions of applications.

Mike
Glyphman
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by Glyphman »

MikeW wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:26 am 64-bit can access more memory than 32-bit, but being 64-bit doesn't necessarily equate to operational speed increases for many/most applications given the same files (in fact, some 64-bit applications benchmark slower than their 32-bit counterparts). "Speed" differences can become apparent when one is bumping up against the addressable memory limit in a 32-bit version compared to a 64-bit counterpart, but it isn't really greater speed per se. It's just not running into the same resource issues all other things being equal.
Mike
Hi Mike... copied a text that explains that it's more into this question than just memory handling:

Why do 64-bit applications work faster than 32-bit ones?

The difference in performance between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of applications depends greatly upon their types, and the data types they are processing. But in general you may expect a 2-20% performance gain from mere recompilation of a program - this is explained by architectural changes in 64-bit processors.
More general-purpose registers in such processors let you optimize work with local variables in functions which do not need to be saved into main memory anymore. Several function arguments are passed through registers and it also reduces the time to call them.

The extended address space eliminates the limitation concerning the maximum 4 Gbytes of main memory available on the 32-bit architecture. The possibility to store the whole necessary data set in the main memory allows avoidance of overly slow data swapping to the disk, and it lets some programs working with large data arrays get several times the performance gain.
However, the other side of the move to the 64-bit version is a two-time increase of the size of pointers and some other data types, which might result in an increased demand of the software to the system's physical memory. In some cases, it might slow down the speed of a 64-bit application in comparison to a 32-bit one. However, it occurs rarely and such cases are usually determined by an unsuccessful choice of the format in which data are stored in the program.
Note also that when you launch 32-bit versions of software on 64-bit systems of the Windows family, old 32-bit applications are executed a bit slower because of the WoW64 subsystem which emulates the 32-bit environment. An average performance loss because of this WoW64 layer is 2-3%, although in some special cases it might be much more.

Author: https://www.viva64.com/en/k/0003/
MikeW
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by MikeW »

I understand all that. What you quoted really doesn't conflict with what I wrote. It explains more detail.

However, while I think it would be good for MT to be 64-bit, it may never result in an increase of speed in daily use. It may decrease initial cataloging. With extremely large font catalogs, it may decrease startup time once that is done. But neither of those things are a given.

In testing many applications over the years offered in both 32- and 64-bit flavors, I have rarely seen true performance gains and have often seen slower start times. Where those 64-bit versions of applications did meet my expectations were on very large jobs where there was noticeable disk swapping with their 32-bit counterparts. With fast disks, though, I only rarely have noticed disk-swapping.

However, I also don't use computationally taxing applications nor ones that require a lot of constant math to render on-screen. I don't think MT is a computationally taxing application.
Glyphman
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by Glyphman »

MikeW wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:31 pm
However, while I think it would be good for MT to be 64-bit, it may never result in an increase of speed in daily use. It may decrease initial cataloging. With extremely large font catalogs, it may decrease startup time once that is done. But neither of those things are a given.
Hi again Mike, I'm not a technichian but reflects more to my own experiences. As I wrote in the 1st post... I had another similar software that works with databases like MT. When they released the 64-bit upgrade it was a enormous difference in speed. I tested with 1 library including apr 70.000 fonts and it took just 3-4 seconds to load into the preview list. Before 64-bit it took about 20 seconds.
I think if you optimize the architecture for 64-bit it will speed up a bit :)
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Any plans for going 64-bit ?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

MainType 8.0 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
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